There are two groups of Americans I’m having a tough time understanding. One of them consists of the sexually eccentric, the other is made up of the elderly.

Because we have been inundated with pro-gay propaganda for so many years that if you say the least little thing that goes against the grain, that questions the claim that gays make the best friends, are the nicest people and are the very best possible parents any child could have, you are labeled a homophobe.

Well, to begin with, no sooner did the Psychiatric Society of America decide that homosexuality wasn’t a mental illness than gays decided that anyone who had a bone to pick with their adolescent lifestyle or political agenda must be suffering from a psychiatric disorder. Still, how they came to determine that raising an objection to same-sex marriage constituted a phobia is beyond me. For instance, if you don’t buy into Obamacare, are you suffering from libophobia? If you have problems with our presence in Libya, with cap-and-trade or a trillion-dollar stimulus, does that constitute an irrational fear of liberal policies? As a conservative, I’d say there’s nothing irrational about it. Many groups, including blacks, Jews, Muslims and illegal aliens, have their detractors, but only homosexuals are encouraged to dismiss those who question their agenda as mental defectives.

I don’t happen to think that homosexuals are bad people, although I do wish they hadn’t managed to confiscate a perfectly fine word, gay, which strikes me as an inappropriate moniker for a group that includes so many drama queens. I’ve never suggested they’re evil. Feeling as I do about having an appointment with a proctologist – trepidation bordering on stupefaction – I confess that I find their sex lives extremely bizarre. But, I hasten to add, I know that some people, including my wife, regard my love of baseball as a sure sign of derangement.

What I do find annoying about a great many homosexuals is their insistence on identifying themselves solely on the basis of their sexual activities. To be fair, I have an equal intolerance with heterosexual men whose identity seems to be totally wrapped up in their sexual activities and whose conversation consists of bragging about their conquests. It just strikes me as adolescent.

As you may have noticed, I have made several references to sexual activity – which is something that all the propagandists gloss over. Although gays populate movies and TV shows to such a degree that you would think that they represent 25 percent of the population, rather than their actual 2.5 percent, they are nearly always depicted as asexual human beings. They are cute, they are cuddly, they’re amusing neighbors and loyal chums, but they’re not sexual human beings. Their mascot is Nathan Lane. What Hollywood and the media would have us believe is that they are nothing more or less than teddy bears who have somehow mastered speech.

As for gay-pride parades, I can hardly imagine anything goofier. What is it exactly that they’re so proud of? That their sexual activity will never lead to the birth of a baby, but only, tragically on occasion, to a dreadful disease?

That brings us to the second group, the one to which I belong. That’s old folks. I am neither proud nor ashamed to be elderly, which I happen to believe is the proper attitude for people in both groups.

Americans, by and large, deal with all sorts of disasters with an aplomb that’s admirable. Perhaps, in the face of natural catastrophes, we’re not quite as well-behaved as the Japanese, but we generally acquit ourselves well when enduring hurricanes, floods and tornadoes. But tell older Americans that reality demands that changes in Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and government pensions are inevitable, and they either go berserk or turn into whiny babies.

But, of course, they aren’t entirely at fault. After all, politicians on the left keep telling us that there’s plenty of money to go around. By which they mean that so long as the printing presses keep working and the paper doesn’t run out, we’re in great shape.

But, wouldn’t you think that once in a while, we would all – young and old alike – recall that these same people, people such as Harry Reid, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Nancy Pelosi, assured us in 2008 that rumors of an impending financial meltdown were all a figment of some loony conservative’s overwrought imagination?

Come to think of it, I only wish that I could explain away the likes of Reid, Frank, Dodd and Pelosi that easily.